Not sure, but there's nothing wrong with smr for the purpose of media storage.

If you're only talking about simply dumping videos to a drive and using it a write once/read many configuration then I would agree, but when you're talking about using them in a parity based storage array then it gets a little more fuzzy, especially when it comes to parity updates or rebuilding a failed drive.

The drawbacks of using SMR drives in these arrays may not bother some or most people but that isn't the same as saying there are no drawbacks at all.

RAID protection is only for failed drives. That's it. It's no replacement for a proper backup.

I have gone back and forth on housing the media locally but with cloud based storage I prefer storing everything in the cloud. I don't have to worry about power consumption, availability, outages, etc. This of course all hinges on fast upload/download. I still maintain a local storage but is only used for temporary storage or to hold a que for large files. If I am not strict about audio/video performance than streaming the content from the cloud storage is acceptable.

Plex and the like are integrating with cloud storage providers to make the process more streamlined.

I was just researching surveillance drives and noticed they seem to be either 4TB, 6TB, or 8TB.

I'm a little bummed by that. The 5TB drives were a good value for me. The 6TB are still a bit too expensive, and the 4TB are too small, having built my initial RAID with 3x5TB drives.

But I'm ok for now. I just ripped 30 more blu-rays (Thanksgiving deals) and have 850 GB remaining on my 10TB system. That will get me through Christmas. Then I need to stop buying until I've done more watching